The Good Example of Conan Without Borders

One, that culture is the catalyst for a lot of how people treat each other, and that many of the cultural problems both in the United States and the world at large, which people demand to have governments solve, start at home, at the individual level, due to creating isolated, comfortable echo chambers of thought. It’s a lot harder to hate someone who disagrees with you politically, to demagogue them, when you’ve had a beer with them and shared some good times. We live in a society where bomb-throwers a uniquely empowered to have their views shared, and, my opinion is that it shouldn’t be like that.

Clearly, what the country needs now are healers and ambassadors — people who can go meet people who aren’t like them and inspire good feelings, because a lot of the time people don’t remember what you said exactly, or what your reasoning or logic was, but how you made them feel. The fact that Conan is going out there and representing exactly this kind of behavior, I think sets an example that we should all try to follow in our day to day lives.

A great example of this, is the way that Steven Yeun handled the fact that Conan O’Brien had been mispronouncing his name for years. He told him, as a friend, and they laughed about it. Had he not forged that relationship, based on positive, shared emotional experiences, the typical manifestation of such a fopah may occur — Steven may have seethed privately until he expressed it to others who shared the same experience, they rallied around the issue and formed a political group denouncing Conan for his racial insensitivity. By making friends, you open special doors to these kinds of healthy conflict resolutions.